


Thief

by LadyYateXel



Series: Deep Dish Nine [3]
Category: Deep Dish Nine - Fandom, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 11:23:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyYateXel/pseuds/LadyYateXel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garak doesn't believe in fate, destiny, or luck, and they don't believe in him either.</p><p>Set in and written for the Deep Dish Nine universe, but I've been told it will work for just about any Garak and Bashir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thief

**Author's Note:**

> Falls somewhere after establishment of a relationship. At time of writing, there are no chapters to even set down as benchmarkers. Please assume 'some future time' for now!

 

 

Many years ago, his people placed quite a high value on fate and destiny. As it happened, they didn't have much use for luck, because everything happened the way it was meant to happen. And when the new 'civilized' Cardassians replaced their ancient ancestors, they did away with fate, discarded destiny, and, so as to not complicate things, did not bother picking luck back up either.

 

Garak was not raised to believe in any of these things, but he still heard the stories spawned by a culture that did. The ancient mythology was meant to entertain, not to inform or inspire, and so when he is asked, Garak says he does not care for fate, he does not follow a destiny, and he will not have any kind of luck, good or otherwise, thank you.

 

Sometimes, though, in weaker moments, childhood lessons he thought he'd never learned creep to the surface. Unlike what the stories taught, however, Garak's encounters with his ideas of fate are not positive, and they are not romantic, and they do not work out in his favor. They're brief flashes of weakness tempered by self-loathing, nothing that could be called a philosophy or a lifestyle, but when they appear, no matter how briefly, they cast an ugly kind of shade on Garak's brightest source of light.

 

It is odd that he even met Julian. Odder still that they became friends, let alone fallen into so much _like_ that only the space of one more silly overnight date and a failing attempt to be rational adults keeps it from being spoken as love. Julian is brilliant in several senses of the word, and it is dazzling, distracting, and warm. He is charming, sincere, compassionate, and several other things that Garak has attempted to replicate in himself with only a veneer of success. The little mask of a man that Julian could love boiled to Garak's surface when he tried to be something new, and now Julian seems content with loving the mask while it's actually the mess behind it returning his feelings.

 

And fate says, “ _He is not for you_.”

 

And destiny says, “ _We intended him, built him, for someone else_.”

 

And luck does not exist, but if it did it would reflect upon how fortunate Garak is that Julian trusts enough to believe a mask that hasn't cooked into a whole person yet.

 

Knowing that Julian is not for him doesn't stop Garak from keeping him. Very rarely does a thief not know the value of what he's stolen.

 

Julian makes the past feel unfathomably distant and ready to spill over in the same instant. When Garak is with Julian, people who have died and suffered at Garak's hand are both irrelevant and clawing to be acknowledged. Ignoring them both keeps Julian close and enforces the mask sitting between them.

 

Julian is a bright light where there is no suffering (Julian has committed his life to this, in fact), but Garak seems stuck in the concentrated shadow Julian casts. And somehow, Julian foolishly chooses to focus on the distracting handpuppet that Garak holds just outside the shadow's edge, rather than the full creature inside it.

 

Garak is fully aware it's a distraction. Julian may be aware of it too, for there are moments when he ostensibly speaks to the mask, but is in fact looking well beyond it. And when fate or destiny poke, Garak is not just distracting Julian from what he really is, or was, or might be, but from someone else entirely. Someone who does not needs masks and handpuppets and shadow to hide in. Someone who is already the kind of person Julian will want and need and who is not a decade and a half delayed.

 

Somewhere, some charming, sincere, trusting, and brilliant person is alone and waiting because rather than admit his own foolishness, Garak has lured Julian away and has chosen to bask in light and joy that is not his and that he does not deserve.

 

The worst part of Garak's foolishness, however, is when he chooses to think that his relationship with Julian is fate's plan exactly.

 

And fate says, “ _Here, something to make you feel happy and warm.”_

 

_**Do I get to keep him?**_

 

And destiny says, “ _Certainly. For a while.”_

 

_**For a while?**_

 

And luck does not exist, but it tolerates Garak's attempt to dodge the other two. ' _You still have to repay the damage you've done. So, please, enjoy. Share everything you can with him. Take joy, pride, and pleasure in him, and most certainly fall in love with him. And when your mask will no longer hold, and what spills out terrifies him, we will take him away from you, and you will have paid.'_

 

And Garak foolishly trots along next to brilliance, waving masks and puppets and anything else he can fashion out of the decent parts of himself in the hopes that by the time fate or destiny wants to reclaim Julian from the man who stole him, Garak will be something other than a mess behind a facade and Julian won't want to be unstolen.

 

“Sometimes, Garak, I think it's really lucky that we met.”

 

“Do you?”

 

Julian is laughing. Joking. “I know, I know, you don't believe in luck. Maybe it's more like it was fated then, huh? We were destined to meet, someone just made you several years too early!”

 

Brilliant.

 

“That's charming.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
